domain:betonit.substack.com
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
6hr ago
We also dislike people declaring they have reported someone. "I'm telling on you!" is not any more effective or impressive here than it was in kindergarten. What is that supposed to accomplish? Put extra pressure on the mods? We can see your report. Submit your report and move on.
Apologies then, I will not do this in the future.
The thing is, I think your argument is completely plausible and I allow for it in (2). Epstein exploited Wexner, but Wexner was and is a committed Zionist and was long close to the WJC and Lauder, who in turn were and are clearly very well connected in Israel, particularly the center and center left. If someone in Wexner, Lauder or Barak’s orbit (including Israeli intelligence) asked for a favor, an introduction, or information Epstein had acquired, there is every chance Epstein would have done it as you say on an ad-hoc basis, probably not for money but for influence and favor trading (useful given his sexual proclivities had put him under investigation from the mid-1990s).
It’s also obviously, clearly true that Epstein had powerful friends who ensured he was given a sweetheart deal in the early 2000s. They may have been ‘intelligence’, they may just have been very well connected Wall Street people who were close to the Bush administration for whom ‘belongs to intelligence’ was a convenient smoke screen for more naked corruption and favor trading (I think this is more likely; telling Acosta Epstein is intelligence is more likely to stop an investigation than telling him a top donor is friends with him). You don’t need Mossad to frustrate an investigation if you’re friends with a former president and very close to leading GOP donors, which Epstein was.
But crucially, this is all very different to the allegation, made explicitly by Tucker, that Israel and Mossad were behind his immense wealth and also behind a sex-trafficking elite kompromat operation. It is more likely that Epstein was a pervert who preyed on teenage girls (often from poorer backgrounds, in NYC, West Palm Beach, and via modelling world connections he had made through Wexner and the 1980s New York fashion scene from Eastern Europe, and before that his former and before that current students) his whole adult life. As he grew in wealth and power, he sometimes offered girls he was seeing to business associates, not as kompromat but as sweeteners for deals and friendship (Meister, Wexner’s ex-insurance man who introduced Epstein to him and regrets it, explicitly says that Epstein showed up to his house once with models and offered them to him).
Eventually, he used his seduction (likely romantic) of Wexner to catapult himself into the top echelon of NYC wealth, met Maxwell, fresh into exile after the scandal around the collapse of her father’s business, and joined the global elite. At this point he began to attract the attention of people for whom knowing what that elite is doing and thinking was and is important, and as he became aware of his victims reporting him more as the 1990s went on (before then, between ~1965 and 1990 or so no cops would have taken it seriously at all, but the early 90s saw the emergence of third-wave consent based feminism, modern workplace harassment guidance and law) he may have played those connections to try to stay clear of jail.
But no, I don’t think Mossad got a failed high school teacher a job at Bear Stearns. I don’t think they gave a billion dollars to a washed up, fired trader who was unhireable by any legitimate Wall Street firm because he violated securities law in the hope that he would Gatsby his way into the world’s elite and set up a sex trafficking blackmail operation.
HereAndGone
9hr ago
Also sounds more like a stalker who followed her during periods of activity and went inactive when she was inactive? There's a lot of crazy people out there, someone obsessed with Ghislaine Maxwell who persuaded themselves into a fantasy life version of her (see the movie Single White Female for a fictional version of this) isn't the most implausible thing.
2rafa
20hr ago
I think the primary beneficiary of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation was himself and maybe a small handful of actual friends, who he probably didn’t care to blackmail but may or may not have kept kompromat on. Separate to that was his love of the game and of impressing successful and powerful people, which he enjoyed doing his whole life, regardless of whether or not they shared his sexual proclivities. In the course of the latter he may have traded in secrets, although it was never close to being his main line of work.
CanofWorms
4hr ago
Great post. Can you finish the story through the present day? It feels like the story ended right when it was taking off ( I understand you’re not writing a biography of Epsteins life, but it would be a compelling read if you did).
HereAndGone
9hr ago
I agree that Epstein was a fabulist so we can't trust any claims he might have made. I think if there was any 'intelligence gathering' it was more akin to him trying to shop gossip around to anyone who would pay for it ("hey I have all these connections with rich and important people, you might be interested in what I can find out") because he was that sort of untrustworthy little toad, and that the best/only connections he had as contacts were Mossad or somebody who knew somebody who was connected to Mossad, and they might have bought bits'n'scraps because hey, why not? this guy might turn out to be useful sometime if he ever does stumble across anything important or we can finally find a use for him (I have no doubt, for instance, that they'd be happy to gather blackmail material on the Royal Family via 'Randy Andy' just because).
aqouta
18hr ago
JP Morgan has facilities in Israel and is one of the most important banks in the world. The idea that they needed a mossed connection to have some of their executives meet with the prime minister of Israel is just kind of silly. Jaime himself could have easily facilitated the connection. If it was with some lower level executive then you really shouldn't invoke the JPM name because lower level execs are just normal people with limited influence. I've met a number of executives of this level and if they were interested in this type of connection it'd just be mundane "can we cut the red tape on the construction of this thing we are underwriting the loan on" type of stuff, not insidious geopolitical shenanigans.
2rafa
20hr ago
He got off the hook in 2008 and pled not guilty here.
He was still convicted in the early 2000s, though, he just got a sweetheart deal. This time there were more witnesses and more credible witnesses, more victims and more medium to high quality testimony from his own former employees. In addition, he was already a convicted criminal, which would affect sentencing and make a second sweetheart deal less likely in any case (regardless of offense or offender). The Florida cases were localized, the New York case had a much greater emphasis on interstate and international movement which meant a much longer sentence in a real prison was inevitable if convicted. As the Ghislaine sentence (and there was much less direct evidence of a lot of her involvement shows), Epstein wasn’t making it out in his lifetime and there is every chance he knew it. It wasn’t embarrassment, it was someone realizing he wasn’t going to get to do any of the things (or people) he wanted ever again.
The Israelis are already among the top 3, if not higher, countries in the world that target the United States most aggressively for spying operations. So the "why would they collected blackmail on allies" would be "for the same reason they do all their other spying operations on their allies."
Spying on the Mormons at the CIA and the hippies at State is very different to blackmailing Alan Dershowitz into becoming a more fervent Zionist. Israeli intelligence in the US is largely about acquiring intelligence Mossad can’t get directly about Israel’s enemies because the US has sources and deals with Qatar, Lebanon, Bahrain, with Iran via Russia and sometimes directly, intercepts intelligence from other countries that might deal with anti-Israel groups like the Houthis and Hezbollah, has some channels with the IRGC. For example, there was a big Israeli effort to get more information about conversations between the Assadist Syrian and Russian governments, and it’s possible that the US might be able to intercept more than Israel, and it has access to shared Five Eyes intelligence that Israel doesn’t. That makes strategic sense and is much cheaper than running a blackmail op on rich Zionist Wall Street tycoons who already attend the friends of the IDF annual fundraiser for free (or indeed, for a significant donation).
“he really charmed his way into getting a job at Bear Sterns”
As I explained, in the Wall Street of the 1970s it really wouldnt have been unusual for a really smart Brooklyn kid to drop out of a math degree at NYU and still end up in finance on the trading floor. At that time, many new traders were working class and didn’t necessarily have college degrees. Everyone who met Epstein said he was insanely charismatic.
funzodonzo
22hr ago
Ehhh.. there's a ton of sophistry on the internet, The Motte is no exception. Let's not pretend this is the Library of Alexandria or the old salons of Europe. There is an occasional interesting and well-thought out post, but those are mostly an exception. This is why I mostly lurk and now just skim top level posts for an interesting topic. It's probably best to view this site as a place where somewhat rightwing malcontents talk amongst themselves with an occasionally centrist or somewhat liberal poster chiming in.
Look, I used to be quite liberal, but back in the "age of woke" I got turned against progressive idiocy. I read SSC, Less Wrong, Steve Sailer, etc. and that helped me see the overreach and sometimes straight out wrongness of the mid 00-10's progressive and liberal ideologies. However, I never dug that deep beyond some rightwing/centrist thinkers. Now that a lot of the right is either in power or in the spotlight (see X), I see how stupid much of it is. Politicians talking about banning chemtrails, TACO Don who doesn't understand trade beyond a general love of tariffs and wants to continue scamming his supporters (e.g. formerly Trump University, now Trump Coin, Trump scent, etc.), and to quote SSC, the spineless toady JD Vance. It's just all so stupid! Well, stupid and malicious. It reminds me of an older meme about Pakistan; that they'd be 100% ok with the world blowing up as long as India was destroyed first.
There are strong arguments to be made about some right wing positions, e.g. reducing the deficit, decoupling from China, demanding NATO allies pay more, on-shoring, etc. but these clowns are just bad at this. The BBB adds to the deficit, tariff schizophrenia doesn't allow for a stable and long term industrial policy, etc.
The left might be wrong a lot of times, but that doesn't make the current right correct.
FtSoA
6hr ago
Well, Epstein was his friend.
It's totally plausible Trump participated in Epstein parties with those young girls Trump said Epstein liked so much. At this point, it's not very plausible that concrete evidence for such activities exists.
The Epstein Story is now an albatross around the Trump Admin's neck from their own supporter base.
It's not an unprompted reaction--there's a lot of strife in MAGA World right now over it. As I said in another comment:
"The MAGAtard Nation has just been spewing BS and is now the dog that caught the car while also driving the car." Including, of course, his present FBI director and deputy director.
ChestertonsMeme
blocking the federal fist
23hr ago
Not OP but his reputation was destroyed, and for someone like him what does he have left?
aldomilyar
8hr ago
If you're going to get a tattoo make it a commitment to an actual lifestyle or longterm bond. I'll respect the signalling of MS13 or Yakuza membership over random pop culture shit.
ControlsFreak
3hr ago
My family, as much as they love me, still regularly sigh and tell me they wish I was less lazy or had more willpower.
In what contexts?
Firstly, why would I lie about my willpower?
I would not claim that you are lying.
willpower... executive function... conscientiousness
I think these are probably nonidentical concepts, though I would likely have to spend some additional time thinking about it to be able to write on it eloquently.
Whence your urge to find solutions to problems that actually work? When it comes, how does it manifest?
ControlsFreak
4hr ago
I find this and the discussion below rather fascinating. It's pretty clear from multiple responses, including some of your own, that you don't simply lack willpower. And it's not at all like some folks would have you believe these conversations go down, where there's a bunch of folks (made of straw or something) telling you that you just lack willpower or are a stupid failure or something. Instead, you're trying to self-proclaim a lack of willpower, which is mostly contradicted by all available evidence.
And further, instead, you've not described almost any challenges that in any way really resemble any sort of lack of willpower. Most of the actual challenges you've described are just problems with a variety of known solutions that actually work... and, well, you've also proclaimed that you have an urge to find those sorts of things.
Frankly, as I put it:
There are a bunch of reasons why they don't do it, and that's okay.
I don't think you've quite hit the nail on the head yet for why you don't do it, but I think it's pretty clear that it's not a matter of willpower, and it's probably not really a matter of a couple minor challenges that have a variety of pretty well known solutions, either.
JarJarJedi
16hr ago
Haaretz said it was 260 as of April 2024
That figure is probably correct. Haaretz is an extremely leftist publication which is very hostile to Likud government, and if that government went crazy enough (which it wouldn't because as I said that would be idiotic) to try and hide massive death toll, they'd expose it gladly. Except in this case there's nothing to expose.
Al-Jazeera said 860 five days ago
Al Jazeera is full of shit. And I mean it as the most general assessment possible, anytime they say anything about Israel you can assume they are full of shit and you will be right pretty much every time. If there ever is a conspiracy in Israel government, whatever it be, Haaretz can be plausibly the one that would uncover it (of course, given it's a Likud government, otherwise they'd just shut up, they wouldn't attack a leftist government), but not Al Jazeera.
How would they even do that? How many sources in top Israel government positions would leak to freaking Al Jazeera? Let's assume Israeli government and IDF and the Home Front Command and Hevra Kadisha and everybody else are all in on the conspiracy to hide hundreds or thousands of casualties. How the fucking Al Jazeera would know then? From where exactly? Who would tell them? When they have a at least half dozen of perfectly good media outlets in Israel itching to stick it to Bibi? Again, that would be completely idiotic. I like conspiracy theories but a conspiracy theory must make at least a minimal sense.
I don't know where Al Jazeera pulled that number from, and I wouldn't even bother to check. If you are interested in real numbers, get some from some place that isn't full of shit. You could use Haaretz if you want to - if they link to official figures, they usually wouldn't lie about it. Haaretz publishes a lot of lies, but lying about what could be easily checked against official figures would be too stupid, they don't work this way.
I’m sure you can tell me all the reasons those are wrong, but won’t actually be able to tell me a number.
I don't know the exact number, I haven't looked it up, so I'd estimate it as several dozens from Iran thing and about the same from Gaza activities, overall probably between 50 and 100 casualties in the last 3 months.
Did you try checking Wikipedia? While it's not the most reliable of sources, they have a habit that most traditional press neglects, that is linking to primary sources, and those links usually contain such information. I'm pretty sure every death in Israel, be it civilian or military, is reported (though military deaths are reported after a delay due to family notification requirements). You just need to look it up.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
I know at least one doctor with full-sleeves, they were perfectly normal and worked in emergency medicine (which does have a bit of a reputation for wildcards).
I've got a single tattoo, that's usually covered up. It's really not a big deal.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
19hr ago
I appreciate the advice!
My most recent ex gave me a taste for brioche buns, dipping in clotted cream with a drizzle of honey. Absolutely divine. Unfortunately, I've had an uphill struggle finding such extra thick cream anywhere nearby, so the availability can vary even within in the UK. She doesn't live all that far, just a few towns away.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
19hr ago
No. A local maximum is a peak. You seem to be arguing that people on Ozempic are stuck in a state that is better than the alternative (obesity), but not the absolute best possible state (some imagined ideal of pure willpower). If we're torturing a metaphor, that's a local minimum of negative outcomes. But why let basic logic or the meaning of words get in the way of your grand philosophical pronouncements?
I suppose Jacques Ellul only died 30 years ago.
And? Darwin died 140 years ago, but we don't treat his theories as gospel just because he's dead. Age doesn't make an argument correct, and name-dropping French philosophers doesn't make your position any less incoherent.
Ah, an appeal to an obscure academic to justify your terror of the modern world. I don't need to have read him to recognize the staggering hypocrisy of your position. You lament the "complex drug" that relies on global supply chains while typing your screed on a device whose complexity makes a vial of semaglutide look like a sharpened stick. This isn't a coherent critique of "technique"; it's just selective, convenient moralizing.
I'm critical of modernity whilst living in it. What else could be reasonable?
What would be reasonable is to apply your critique consistently, instead of drawing an arbitrary line at a medication that saves people from suffering. You enjoy the fruits of modernity that allow for your comfort and your intellectual hobbies, but you condemn the fruits that rescue others from a life of pain and metabolic disease. It's the pinnacle of entitled, ivory-tower thinking.
So I was indeed right to believe you take the DSM-V to have the power to decide the meaning of a word that has existed since the 1500s.
Spare me. I didn't cite the DSM-V; I cited the common, modern, functional understanding of a word as it is used by virtually everyone who isn't deliberately trying to be obtuse. You're clinging to an archaic definition from a historical dictionary as if it's a sacred text, precisely because it allows you to dilute the word "addiction" into meaninglessness. By your logic, a marathon runner is "addicted" to running and I am "addicted" to washing my hands between patients. It's a semantic game to avoid confronting the vacuity of your argument. Context matters. If we're talking about cars, I don't define "transmission" as "the act of sending a message" just because that's what it meant in 1400.
This isn't about Oxford vs. Wikipedia. This is about clarity vs. deliberate obfuscation. You are using language as a weapon to feel intellectually superior, not as a tool to understand the world.
And let's be clear about what you're really arguing for when you strip away the philosophical fluff. You say weaning off the drug should be the goal to avoid "slavery." For many, the alternative isn't freedom; it's a return to the biological slavery of a body screaming for food, a slavery that leads to diabetes, liver failure, and an early grave.
You can sit there and pontificate about "novel addictions" and the failings of modernity. I have to look my mother in the eye. I've seen the "natural" state you seem to prefer, and it's ugly and it's brutal. So frankly, you can keep your dusty dictionary and your non-sequitur arguments. They are useless. The pill works.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
20hr ago
I was confusing tomatoes with other fruit-picking where there is a machine to scoop them up:
For example: https://x.com/TechInsider/status/1271322529362132994
I think that farmers (and businesses generally) are lazy and don't behave economically efficiently. It's creative destruction that raises efficiency, slowly and painfully. The British were notorious for not upgrading their machinery in the steel industry, you had steel chambers for early nuclear plants being forged in blast chambers designed for producing dreadnought armour, 40 years old. Or using gear they got from germany as war reparations from WW1 even in the 1960s and early 1970s! So the British steel industry got razed. It's basically gone. The German steel industry is going too but they did reap some counterintuitive gains from the wartime destruction meaning they had to rebuild and get leaner and smarter.
Capital investment and R&D is always good in my book.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
21hr ago
It’s crucial to understand why this isn’t the case. The mechanic competes in wages with the fruit picker (in an economy with an absence of illegal labor), not directly but transitively, because the mechanic competes with somebody who competes with somebody who […] competes with the fruit-picker. Increasing opportunity for the lower class increases it for the lower-middle, which increases it for the middle. Everyone’s QoL and wages increase. Food prices increase, but wages increase higher than they for the lower and middle. It won’t increase wages for the upper white collar professionals, because there’s a strict barrier where they simply would never consider entering a trade or working as a chef even if wages in these places rose considerable, which is because of the class association. (And remember remittance payments: 66 billion yearly just for Mexico!)
They would love when the price of consumer goods go up if their wages go up as well.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
22hr ago
I feel like this discussion is the missing ingredient to lots of the topics du jour. Let's take the leftward drift of young women- well social conservatism today seems to have, uh, not discussed what other people owe to them, only what they owe to other people.
Yep. There was a commenter here who said women lacked "accountability" because they want to be able to f*** without risking being pregnant for nine months. I'm going to hazard a guess that that message won't be a particularly popular one among young women, as like with most voters they prefer politicians who will make their lives easier rather than harder.
That said, one should be wary of parts of the gender-divide narrative. Trump's performance among white men was actually worse in 2024 than in 2016, while his performance among white women improved. CNN exit polls confirm the same phenomenon.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
10hr ago
Turok makes the mistake of then coming to this forum of actual thoughtful people and assuming the conservatives here need to answer for the worst Trumpists the engineers of X can serve. The conservatives here don't recognize themselves in the criticisms he levels at them and drama ensues.
I am not a newcomer to the SSC sphere, I've been posting on ACX and DSL for years, and I've won DSL's Diadochus award for my posts twice. (I'm also currently banned from both places.) I'm not attributing the stupidity of Twitter to this place, I'm just reading what people here write, like coffee_enjoyer:
Sewing bras is more conducive to wellbeing than stacking them on a shelf. Picking fruit is so Edenic that it’s the first recorded activity of humanity. In what world would “picking fruit” be pathetic? I think you are having trouble dissociating the image you have of these things now, with what they would look like if employers didn’t have a semi-slave class. There’s a farm near me where people — college-educated, white, smart — sign up to plant and reap for free. Because in return they get free room and board, and most importantly a social environment filled with other young white people. They work quite hard, then they drink in the evenings and dance and fuck and make music and so on. This is exactly what agricultural work was for nearly all of history. Not for the slaves, of course, but for the non-enslaved.
This, by the way, is what I mean by "poverty fetishism" and "third worldism."
Clementine
13hr ago
Duty without reciprocation is just exploitation.
No, that's precisely the kind of rights-based mindset that I'm describing as not being duty-based.
Duty without reciprocation isn't exploitation, it's virtue. That's the entire point of duty-based thinking. That you might not get jack shit in return and you do it anyway, because it's your duty. The entire concept is of having things you do simply because you are supposed to, not for other incentives.
It is, admittedly, a very traditional mindset. But it's a fundamental lynchpin to how the whole thing holds together.
Trump on his assassination attempt:
Trump’s claims of stolen election have led to much recriminations that he is no mere crook or liar, but damaging to democracy. His supporters otoh, have ramped up the anti-elite conspiracy to include this assassination attempt, in order to show loyalty/outbid themselves, even here on the motte. This rejection by the principal actor/TV star sends a clear signal where the truth lies in this matter, whether you agree with Trump’s politics or not. Test is over, results are in, you can calibrate. If you bought the assassination conspiracy, consider that your brain may have been fried by the culture war.
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